Influence of losses on the wave-particle duality
Aiai Jia, Jie‐Hui Huang, Tiancai Zhang, Shi‐Yao Zhu · Physical Review A · 2014
We theoretically investigate the influence of losses on the wave-particle duality in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. Balanced losses (equal loss on the two paths) have no effect on the visibility and predictability (also the duality relation), while unbalanced losses do have influence on them. If the unbalanced losses occur inside the interferometer, the losses have an effect on both the visibility and predictability, while the losses have no effect on the duality relation. If the unbalanced losses occur after the interferometer, the losses have no effect on the visibility, but do have an effect on the predictability (also the wave-particle duality), which can lead to a result that the duality relation exceeds 1, ${P}^{2}+{V}^{2}>1$. The influence of losses can be eliminated by exchanging the two detectors or the two inputs (one photon and the vacuum) of the interferometer and then averaging the two results. Consequently, we have the visibility, predictability, and duality relation ${P}^{2}+{V}^{2}\ensuremath{\le}1$ independent of the unbalanced losses. The obtained $P$ and $V$ for the unbalanced losses in the two paths do not represent the original predictability and visibility, and the result of ${P}_{D}^{2}+{V}_{D}^{2}>1$ does not mean the ``violation'' of the original duality.